What is EcoVadis?

Earlier this year we were very proud to announce that we had achieved the Gold Standard for sustainability performance by EcoVadis, ranking us within the top 5% of all corporations globally which take part in these assessments. But what does this mean? And why is it so important? We caught up with our QSE Manager, Paul Mulcahy to find out a bit more about EcoVadis.

What is EcoVadis – What does it measure?

Ecovadis provide a system to allow organisations to evaluate their own and their supply chain’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) levels. It covers 21 CSR indicators across 4 main themes, Environment, Labour and Human Rights, Ethics and Sustainable Procurement.

What do you have to do to get an EcoVadis Rating?

To get a rating an organisation needs to provide evidence against each of the indicators. This does not just mean providing a document that says we do something – we need to show that we actually do it. It is a very thorough process and takes a lot of hard work and collaboration from a number of teams including HR, QSE and our service and technical teams.

What do you think are the main benefits of having the EcoVadis rating?

It allows us to demonstrate to all our stakeholders the investment that Toyota puts into CSR, and also that part of our success comes from being an ethical organisation that takes care of our people, our customers, the environment and the communities we live in.

How has EcoVadis helped Toyota to improve their performance?

Toyota has teams dedicated to ensuring high standards of CSR. Ecovadis allows us to measure how good we are and the areas in which we may be able to improve. It is good to have people looking in from the outside who deal with many CSR leading organisations analysing what and how we do things. This allows us to benchmark ourselves against other leading organisations, many of which are our customers.